With omnipresence of the Internet and the availability of high speed Internet connections, multimedia content rendered on computers has become popular and accessible with less hassle. In addition, voice over internet protocol (VOIP) services have emerged as a new technological innovation in using the foundation of the Internet to provide voice communication services.
The popularity of multimedia and VOIP services also brings unwanted messages to the users. Similar to electronic mail (e-mail) spam, these so-called multimedia spam messages arrive at users' voicemail or videomail inboxes, answering machines, and the like. Even more so than its e-mail spam counterpart, multimedia spam is more intrusive and annoying because the multimedia spam messages may ring a person's home telephone, video phone or mobile phone while the users are at sleep. E-mail spam messages may congest a user's inbox at 2:00 A.M., but as long as a user does not open or access the inbox, the user is not immediately disturbed by the e-mail spam messages.
Existing solutions to this problem attempt to provide a content agnostic spam detection system. Some of the solutions involve identifying multimedia spam messages delivered through a telecommunication network based on the time of the day, the caller-identification (ID) information of the call, or the like. Such solutions, while stopping the user's telephone from ringing in the first place, fail to allow a user to have more determination or control in the spam decision making process.